Syrian rebels: Trickle of U.S. arms not enough

Sep. 12, 2013
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A Syrian government soldier aims his weapon during clashes Sept. 11 with Free Syrian Army fighters in Maaloula, northeast of the capital Damascus. / SANA via AP

by Nuha Shaaban, Special for USA TODAY

by Nuha Shaaban, Special for USA TODAY

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AMMAN, Jordan - Arms smuggled by the United States to the Syrian rebels are just "symbolic" and won't make a difference in the fight against the regime or against Islamists, Free Syrian Army rebel commanders and the Syrian opposition told USA TODAY.

Human rights groups say a deal being discussed to take out Syria's chemical weapons will do nothing to stop the regime's campaign of killing people with incendiary bombs, missiles, tank shells and the denial of medical care - which they say amounts to war crimes.

"The repeated use of these high-explosive weapons with wide-area effects in areas populated by civilians strongly suggests that the military willfully used methods of warfare incapable of distinguishing between civilians and combatants, a serious violation of international humanitarian law," said Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch.

President Obama announced in June that the United States would provide "lethal" arms to Syrian rebels to counter the regime's slaughter of their fighters and destruction of cities and towns sympathetic to them.

Shipments - mainly going via Jordan - have consisted of light munitions and anti-tank missiles. Nothing heavier has been delivered because the U.S. government is worried weapons may get into the hands of Muslim jihadist groups fighting in Syria, rebels say.

"It won't change anything," said Abu Abdullah, 33, a Free Syrian Army rebel commander based in northern Syria near the Turkish and Iraqi borders. "What we have gotten is not enough."

Abdullah said the weapons go through a special command center in Jordan operated by the CIA and are earmarked for select groups of rebel fighters battling Muslim jihadists, many from foreign countries who seek an Islamic state in Syria.

This means the assistance is not always reaching the rebel groups fighting regime troops or others.

"The weapons they got are not enough to face jihadists, either," Abdullah said.

The rebels are a decentralized force of hundreds of independent units, and some units refuse to denounce anti-American jihadist groups because these groups have seen success against the military of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Some of the rebel groups work closely with the better armed and organized jihadists such as al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al Nusra, designated by the United States as a terrorist group.

Syrian rebel commanders near Damascus say they and rebel brigades they communicate with have not reported receiving arms from the United States - only from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, all light munitions as well.

"It wasn't anything effective - no missiles," said Abu Sufian, a Free Syrian Army rebel based in the Damascus suburbs.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his team opened two days of meetings in Switzerland with their Russian counterparts Thursday, hoping to emerge with the outlines of a plan to secure and destroy vast stockpiles of Syrian chemical weapons.

Obama had threatened to strike Syria militarily for a chemical attack that killed 1,400 people, mostly women and children, in two villages last month. He backed off that threat to consider an offer by Russia, Syria's main backer, to place the chemical weapons under international supervision.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the rebels of the attack, which the United States says is not true. Putin, who has provided Assad with arms and protection from sanctions at the United Nations, called the rebels terrorists.

He urged the United States in an opinion piece in The New York Times to swear off military force against Assad. Human rights groups assailed Putin for his claims.

"There is not a single mention in Putin's article, addressed to the American people, of the egregious crimes committed by the Syrian government ... deliberate and indiscriminate killings of tens of thousands of civilians, executions, torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests," said Anna Neistat at Human Rights Watch.

"The continued failure of the international community to respond to atrocities in Syria allows crimes on all sides to continue unaddressed," she said.

A four-person United Nations rights panel issued a report Wednesday detailing war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria. Government forces have committed murder, torture, rape and attacks on civilians, said the U.N. Commission of Inquiry. Its full report will be presented Monday in Geneva.

The report also detailed war crimes by the rebels, but those were far fewer in extent. Of the nine mass killings the panel investigated, eight were committed by Assad's forces.

The Daily Star of Lebanon reported Thursday that European Union aid chief Kristalina Georgieva alleged that Syrian government forces have committed war crimes by seizing medical aid from convoys bound for rebel-held areas.

"There are cases where medical kits, surgical kits, are removed. What it means is that on the other side, a wounded man, woman or child could die," Georgieva said.

"It is a war crime to remove surgical kits from a convoy or to prevent help getting in or, what is even worse, to target medical facilities and bomb them, to shoot at doctors," she said.

She said less than half of the 8 million Syrians who need aid receive it on a regular basis in a civil war that has claimed more than 100,000 lives and driven 2 million refugees abroad.

Tamara Alrifai, Middle East and North Africa advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said the Syrian government denies independent humanitarian organizations access to towns to deliver assistance and evacuate civilians and the wounded.

Walid al-Mouallem, Syria's Foreign Affairs minister, told the International Committee of the Red Cross in August it would be allowed to enter the besieged city of al-Qusayr only "after the fighting ends."

"That violates international humanitarian law, which requires fighting forces to spare civilians and allow them rapid access to medical care and other humanitarian relief," Alrifai said.

By far the greatest crime, rights groups say, is the indiscriminate use of heavy munitions against non-military targets to terrify people who may offer support to the rebellion.

"Syria is persisting in using cluster bombs, insidious weapons that remain on the ground, causing death and destruction for decades," said Mary Wareham, Arms Division advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

The BBC reported on an apparent Syrian government airstrike in northern Syria where an incendiary bomb was dropped on a school Aug. 26. Rights groups say they have documented numerous attacks by Syrian armed forces on schools not used for military purposes by rebels.

Incendiary weapons contain flammable substances that burst into fireballs on contact. The weapons used by Syrian forces are believed to contain napalm or white phosphorus, Human Rights Watch says.

Ballistic missiles are also unleashed regularly by the Syrian military against populated areas. Whole blocks of apartment buildings have been blown into piles of concrete. Thousands of civilians have died in the attacks in the cities of Homs and Aleppo. The bombings have been going on for months. On July 26, at least 33 civilians were killed, including 17 children, in a missile strike in Aleppo.